Trump’s emphasis of immigration is really resonating with his base. Of course! His base really likes the idea of purging the American soul of “impurity”, not realizing that the real “impurity” lies within its own soul. The is the garden-variety projection that Carl Jung told us about. What we can’t accept within, we immediately see without and then demonize it and insist that it be eradicated…or at least “deported.”

And it is no accident that fundamentalist Christians have answered the bell to Trump’s clarion call for purity. They thrive on the “letter of the law” even though they fail to regard their enthrallment with this spiritual malady which the Apostle Paul said ultimately kills. They live in a world of categories, the base of which is “us” vs. “them” and wake up each day of their life and decide who is going to be banished into the ever broadening category of “them.” They fail to grasp the teaching of Jesus that “ye shall be judged as ye judge,” which is my paraphrasing! To the degree that we need to exclude, that we need to deny inclusion to the fallen and the broken, the outsider, Jesus was telling us that we will be excluded. To be more precise, he was telling us that in our unwillingness to “include” we are demonstrating our own internal self-imposed torture of “exclusion” from the infinite Grace of God. This is hell.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas wrote a seminal book entitled, “Purity and Danger.” In this book Douglas noted how that in primitive tribes the greater the sense of “impurity” the greater the need to purge itself of the “impurity.” This is a very primitive level of emotional/spiritual development.

ADDENDUM—This is one of three blogs that I now have up and running. Please check the other two out sometime. The three are:

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About literarylew

I am a retired mental health counselor in El Prado, NM near Taos.I have a lovely wife, Claire, and our only children are two lovely dachshunds, Elsa and Ludwig. I have a BA in history/psychology (double major) from Henderson State University and a M. Ed. in counseling from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. I have a passion for literature, religion, philosophy....and, in general, the liberal arts.